Number of teenagers with five ‘good’ GCSEs drops for first time

The number of teenagers who gained at least five Cs in their GCSE exams this year has fallen for the first time in a decade, official figures have shown.

A row over the grading of English GCSEs goes on (Picture: PA)

This year 58.6 per cent of students gained at least five A*-C grades including English and maths, down 0.4 percentage points compared to 2011.

The dip is the first such fall since 2004/05, when the government changed the way in which the figures are collected.

But the Department for Education claimed the decrease was due to an influx of overseas students at fee-paying schools taking English as a second language GCSE, which is not included in the figures.

The National Association of Head Teachers said that while the data showed schools making ‘progress’, the row over the grading of English exams had overshadowed all of the results.

It has emerged pupils who took the English GCSE exam in June were marked more harshly than those who took the paper in January, something the union said was a ‘shambles’.

‘Thousands of young people have had their results and their futures hampered by the GCSE marking fiasco,’ its general secretary Russell Hobby said.

‘We continue to prepare the framework for a legal challenge to see these wrongs righted, with the aim of English being regraded, and we are optimistic in wanting to see official data which will reflect this regrade in the near future.’